Don't know if the CIA will censor my comment or not, but this track looks cooler than expected:

When I heard there was going to be a GP in Russia, I was picturing some kind of street circuit. But with the mountains in back and water in front, plus some nice architecture and an unusual layout, maybe this will end up being another good addition. It seems like a multiple-apex fest.

Anyone know if this is some kind of Cyrillic symbol, like China made their circuit a symbol in their language ?

Soon Tilke will have all spots on "10 worst F1 tracks of all time" list. The man is really determined to do that. Yet another pure-crap track after Valencia, Abu Dhabi (exciting races this year - yes, good tracks - no), India and Korea.

If someone showed me a picture off all the tracks of the F1 calendar I reckon I'd be able to pick out the Tilke ones without know which ones were his. Thay all just seem to have the same pattern. A lot straight, some jerky angular bends, some 90 degree bends and some long, drawn out wide bends. There doesn't seem to be any flow to his tracks, they're just a collection of straights and corners cobbled together. Compare them to a place like Spa which just flows effortlessly from one corner to the next. Even boring tracks like Barcelona, which has a fast sweeping layout, have more personality.

I'll also reserve judgment on if it is a good track or bad one for providing good racing.

I also agree about the "Omega" thought with that layout. I visited the web site for the developer a few weeks back... and I'm not much of a Sci-Fi fan, but looking at the plans shown on that site, with the large buildings for the Olympics, it struck me that it looked like the circuit was set in the "City of Domes" from Logan's Run.

I will say given the setting and location, that I'd probably like to go there for a race weekend more than most of the other recent additions in the Pacific Rim, India and Middle East. (Though if I can swing just 1 out of the US race per year I could afford, I've got quite a check list in Europe to try and hit 1st before they are dropped in favor of 'new market' GPs of Brunei, Indonesia and whatever country is the next with a Shiekh who will write Bernie a $25-mil check, before thinking about trying to get to Sochi for a race so it better be good enough to stay on the calender awhile.)

The problem isn't Tilke, it's the clients who commission. Austin proved this. Most clients are only interested in facilities for entertaining the plutocrats who the event has been put on to entertain, and they situate it somewhere where it is cheap to build, (or in the case of Valencia and Singapore, part of a city street layout) and there is no room within their design brief to actually build a good circuit.

When Austin was designed, it was built for race fans, by race fans, and the location was even chosen to give natural elevation changes and a layout that is not about entertaining yacht owning billionaires.

And Austin looks different to any other "Tilke track" because of this.

The problem isn't Tilke, it's the clients who commission. Austin proved this. Most clients are only interested in facilities for entertaining the plutocrats who the event has been put on to entertain, and they situate it somewhere where it is cheap to build, (or in the case of Valencia and Singapore, part of a city street layout) and there is no room within their design brief to actually build a good circuit.

When Austin was designed, it was built for race fans, by race fans, and the location was even chosen to give natural elevation changes and a layout that is not about entertaining yacht owning billionaires.

And Austin looks different to any other "Tilke track" because of this.

I see your point with regards to Valencia and Singapore but surely if this was a greenfield site then Tilke would have had the freedom to build what he wanted? I'm sure some of the circuit's features are a requirement from the design brief (that horseshoe / omega section perhaps) but I doubt anyone would have told him to make all the corners basically the same and not to put any fast corners in. As for the location, I quite like it. The backdrop is stunning. As far as I'm concerned elevation changes are not a necessity for a good race track, after all Silverstone manages to be a superb circuit despite being as flat as a pancake.

I dont generally mind Tilke tracks but this one really annoys because the design looks like someone used only a ruler and a compass to come up with it. How many right angled turns do you need and what the hell is the turn 2-4 loop for? If there was gradient change it might be alright but it just looks awful and then theres that rectangle at the end of the circuit. They could have one almost anything so why did they put that there? True the location looks good but lik Singapore and Valencia the layout is abismal. But unlike them it has no redeeming features.Thank god I got that off my chest!

I dont generally mind Tilke tracks but this one really annoys because the design looks like someone used only a ruler and a compass to come up with it. How many right angled turns do you need and what the hell is the turn 2-4 loop for? If there was gradient change it might be alright but it just looks awful and then theres that rectangle at the end of the circuit. They could have one almost anything so why did they put that there? True the location looks good but lik Singapore and Valencia the layout is abismal. But unlike them it has no redeeming features.Thank god I got that off my chest!

Valencia has redeeming features?

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I dont generally mind Tilke tracks but this one really annoys because the design looks like someone used only a ruler and a compass to come up with it. How many right angled turns do you need and what the hell is the turn 2-4 loop for? If there was gradient change it might be alright but it just looks awful and then theres that rectangle at the end of the circuit. They could have one almost anything so why did they put that there? True the location looks good but lik Singapore and Valencia the layout is abismal. But unlike them it has no redeeming features.Thank god I got that off my chest!

In Abu Dhabi they had a clean slate to do whatever they wanted, didn't they? No excuses there. But maybe the venue has some say in its layout; somehow I doubt that Tilke had the audacity to design Abu Dhabi to look like an AK-47 on his own initiative, it must have been a request from the venue and he had to work with that. Now it's hard to put the butt, magazine and barrel of a machine gun together to flow like Spa, you'll need lots of right angles and that's how it ended up.

Dull Tilkedrom again, sharp turns one after another, where is, speed, where is racing?

BTW, that half circle there is copied from Anderstorp circuit.

I was looking around a bit yesterday and found this map from 2011, which seems to match very closely the construction photos.

I think it really highlights the issue with having so many (too many IMO) 90-degree or near 90-degree corners. This circuit really doesn't have turns, it has corners. Everywhere you seem to look there is corner and near identical run-off area because each 90-degree corner requires so much run off. One problem I do notice with the buildings, is I really don't see many areas except for the T9 thru T11 section where you could do much besides straights and near 90-degree corners, at least with the footprint they've chosen for the circuit (I think looking at the next photo I'll try and post, they could have flipped the left end differently and had more flexibility.

This (below) appears to be a preliminary design which I think had some better elements.... Notably few hard corners, at T7, T13, T14, T15, T16... also T2 not as severe. The two biggest changes I see is the sweeping arc that is T3 is changed, so that its no longer the "Omega" section. T4 is no longer the sharp hard right... and T5 is not the hard right... but replaced with a very short hard Right, Left Right.

Still not great, but I think a bit more interesting. (Also as I mentioned, I think more flexibility would have been had if T5 went left and continued the circuit that way instead of right as it seemed to have more open area that might have allowed some more interesting paths.)

Also I pretty much confirmed that the one possible wild card of elevation change won't be present (I was thinking the Omega could have been more interesting if it was a high speed incline or decline. But alas curbs will be the only elevation change on this circuit.)

Last edited by Z3RoadstarTXF1 on Sun Dec 30, 2012 4:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The bottom layout is much better, why on earth did they go changing it? Turns 6-9 from the bottom layout could be changed into one faster turn, and we'd have a circuit.

With the current layout, all those steep turns make it look like a street circuit - and if it's not a street circuit, there's no use making it look like one. Heck, you could probably be able to create better street circuits in most cities (I can back up this claim with hours and hours of doing just that in the GMap-pedometer...)

just one thing that needs to be remembered - the primal thing in this area for Russians is to built Winter Olympic Game complex for 2014. Whole F1 track was squeezed in the infrastructure pre-approved by International Olympic Committee. Some of the parts of it will be finished only after the Olympic Games since they would interfere with Olympic facilities.

Thus, this track suffers from the same issue as any other street circuit - limitations of the location are much greater than otherwise. It is all nice to see it as a computer generated image, but we need to wait a bit longer before we have a good picture of the things to come. One thing for sure - it might be cheaper for an average folk to go to US GP than Russian one

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If I'm thinking correct as I try to project how the circuit will translate into action, I'm figuring that the circuit is just going to be absolutely brutal on brakes. I know its hard to figure out just how long some of those staights are without sitting down and trying to calculate it with a scale and ruler... but given the 5.5km distance, I think most will allow for high speeds... which followed by the hard 90-degree (or close) corners, but there is going to some extremely hard braking at almost every turn (excepting 14 & 16 which have short run-ups).

I have no problem with teams or drivers being thrown something different and difficult.

But my fear is, if I'm interpreting things right... high speed, hard braking, I'm envisioning a TON of rubber debris being left in those Turns (or Corners as I'd describe them), which is going to narrow the racing line through the corner even more, so while the braking might open opportunities for setting up a pass, I'm thinking that the high amount of debris is going to negate that completely as drivers must go into the corners nose-to-tail because the tire debris will be so significant that drivers can't afford to risk getting off line.

(I keep thinking that the term "clag" is going to need a very serious vacation following this event as David Hobbs will surely set new records for its usage during a GP on NBC.)

Obviously, T9-11 presents a good opportunity for passing as I'm sure it will be one of the DRS zones, but I can see the rest becoming very much a parade procession with 10 hard/near 90-degree corners (11 or 12 if you count T12 and/or T14). I think even by street course standards that's very extreme and if I'm thinking about the hard turns following the straights correctly, very narrow racing lines in the corners, with above average tire debris.

So... am I interpretting this layout correct? Or is the braking/tire debris not likely to be as bad as I'm imagining?

(I really hope it would be a good circuit as I would look forward to a trip there if I can manage the US GP and 1 out-of-country GP per year, as I've always considered Russia as one of the most interesting places that I'd like to visit having grown up in the Cold War era and majoring in international studies in college along with having had a long-time GF who was a Russian immigrant.... But if the circuit is really poor, without the glitz, romance and history of Monaco, or glamour and money of Singapore, I could see it not maintaining a long-term place on the calender, especially as Sochi will likely be saddled with a lot of debt as seems to be the case for almost every Olympic host.)

_________________We are worse than animals, we hunger for the killWe put our faith in maniacs the triumph of the willWe kill for money, wealth and lust, for this we should be damnedWe are disease upon the world, brotherhood of man

The track actually looks interesting in the overhead shots. If there is a camber to the Omega, it would be fast; also the long curve oppsite the Omega and the sections before and after Turn 1 look fast. Apart from these, the track looks wide as well. I think there will be plenty of opportunities for overtaking.

No, but it looks like its joined after turn 14, then the next 2 corners before when the pit speed limit will probably start are fairly tight on a narrow pit track. It does look like we should see some good pit exit action into turn 2.

They may well decide to make the pit entry after turn 15, The Korean pit exit was really long and was changed (admittedly for different reasons) at the last minute.

The layout itself though, if I remember rightly, turn 8 to 12 is almost an exact copy turn 10 to 14 at Valencia! Which isn't a bad thing as we saw plenty of action there last year. As for all the 90 degree turns, I could be very wrong, but consecutive 90 degrees in the same direction will encourage more overtakes and tactical defence than a lot of left, rights (aka Adelaide)

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Looking at the layout that includes the planned grandstands and safety run-off areas, I think it accentuates the "Omega" appearance.

I guess its good that the developer was named Omega and not Square-D or something with a Box in the name or the circuit would be entirely made of straight lines and squared off corners, minus the long straight T9-11.

I do hope Pirelli will bring 2 sets for the circuit that won't degrade quickly and start throwing rubber all over the course as that will immediately reduce it to a very narrow racing line especially with the hard corners. That's generally my biggest complaint with most street circuits, trailing cars can close up in the straights, but then the corners are so tight with a very defined clean racing line that unless the lead driver makes a mistake and goes off line, the trailing car has to repeat the same line and can't set up a pass with a better braking at the corner. It always seems like it takes very little time for the Singapore circuit to become littered with rubber and the passes end up being a result of contact or the car attempting the overtake forcing the other off line.